Glossary
What does FOMO mean?
In one sentence
FOMO — fear of missing out — is the pressure to buy because a price is rising fast. It reliably leads to buying at the worst moment.
FOMO is the feeling that something is happening without you and you must act now. In crypto it is manufactured deliberately: rising charts, screenshots of gains, countdowns and “last chance” framing all exist to trigger it.
The mechanical problem is that FOMO peaks when prices do. The feeling is strongest after a large rise — which is precisely when you are paying the most and the remaining upside is smallest. Buying driven by FOMO is systematically buying high.
The practical defence is procedural rather than emotional. Decide in advance what you would buy, at what size, and why. If an opportunity requires you to act within minutes and before you have researched it, that urgency is a feature of the pitch, not of the opportunity. Genuine ones survive a night’s sleep.
For example
Every "you are early, do not miss this" message is engineered to produce FOMO. That is what it is for.
Keep browsing
More terms explained
DYOR
DYOR means "do your own research" — good advice in principle, though often used to disclaim responsibility for a bad…
Phishing
Phishing is tricking you into handing over keys, seed phrases or approvals by impersonating something you trust. It is the…
Bull market
A bull market is a sustained period of rising prices and optimism — historically also when the most money is…
Wallet
A crypto wallet does not hold your coins — it holds the keys that prove the coins are yours and…
Stablecoin
A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar — "stable" is an…
Centralised exchange
A centralised exchange (CEX) is a company that runs a crypto marketplace and holds customer funds — the familiar, account-based…